


Beckett

by chezchuckles



Series: Army Castle [6]
Category: Castle (TV 2009)
Genre: Army Spy, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-17
Updated: 2020-11-17
Packaged: 2021-03-10 07:53:46
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 12,132
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27599866
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chezchuckles/pseuds/chezchuckles
Summary: Somewhere at the beginning of all this, Beckett gets a chance to tell her side of the story. (It's labeled 1c on my drive).
Relationships: Kate Beckett & Richard Castle, Kate Beckett/Richard Castle
Series: Army Castle [6]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1945063
Kudos: 21





	Beckett

Kate Beckett stood at odds in her own living room, watching the man she'd never intended to stay finally leave.

He had a phone. And nothing else. The clothes on his back. That coat he'd bought on her advice. That stupid half-shaggy buzzed cut leftover from his Army service, a little floppy at his forehead and fuzzy at his nape, and she knew how it felt under her fingers.

He gave her a lopsided grin and it tugged in her guts. Tugged a place between her legs where his stupid head had been, intimately, jaws unshaven and tongue so talented. She was worked up just standing here. When he slipped his phone into his cargo pocket, she noticed the bulge.

Not the only one worked up.

She had all her gear on, straight to work. She'd brought it home instead of changing in the locker rooms on Friday, anxious to get home. Her mother's ring was tucked under her shirt and she had, she thought, successfully kept it out of the way. 

When he approached her where she stood before the door, his grin wasn't quite as lazy as he was trying to make it out to be. His hands framed her hips. He tugged on her turtleneck inside the open NYPD coat and she felt him fumbling for her bulletproof vest - checking she’d worn it.

"Good girl," he murmured, right before he kissed her and smothered her indignation with the hot work of his tongue.

Damn, he tasted good. He felt good, strong and hard, his mouth unforgiving and taking no prisoners and all of those male things she unconsciously adopted on the job. But here, oh God, here he seduced her into being herself.

"Good hunting, love," he whispered against her jaw.

She pulled back. "Good hunting? Is that what your kind says?"

"My kind?" he chuckled. His fingers tugged and nudged at her vest as if he thought she'd gotten it crooked. "Spies, you mean?"

Just him saying it out loud sent a shiver through her which she barely managed to repress. So far he hadn't seemed to catch on just how hot that was. She'd landed a spy. Holy shit, she had slept with a covert agent who seemed damn intent on coming back and reclaiming all his hard-won territory in six months or a year or however fucking long it took to take down an arms smuggler in Ireland.

"Spies, I mean," she murmured, letting her lips quirk. "Good hunting, Richard." Castle, she thought, and the name he'd told her echoed strangely in her head.

The name he'd invented (for her sake, so she could call him). 

His fingers stopped tugging. He stepped back with that same crooked smile that didn't quite reach. She didn't quite want him to leave either, so at least he looked just as reluctant. (She wasn’t really reluctant. Just settling into the knowledge that fun time was over; back to real life. That was all.)

He stepped back in and took a brutal kiss from her, fingers tightening at the knot of her hair and torquing her head where he wanted her. She fought back, stepping on his steel-toed boots to gain height, going up on her toes in her own uniform boots, sucking on his tongue as he plundered. Took. Ravaged. All those stupid pirates on the seven seas romance novel words that she hated but which came a whole easier than the truth.

(She wanted him. To stay. To fuck her. To be here. To help. To come back.)

"Can I call you when I get settled?" he husked.

Monday morning and his flight was fucking early and she had to be at work in four hours and the sun wasn't even up and he was half-leaning back for her bedroom, stroking her throat with his thumb.

"Call?" she said faintly.

"I'll take that as a yes."

She was too stunned to know what she should have said, but now that their bodies were pressed together again, now that she felt the cornered-hard-edge of his phone at her thigh and something much bigger and better cradled between her thighs, she realized.

She snaked her hand to his pants, knuckled his groin just for the way he grunted, and then hooked her fingers in his cargo pocket. Probed until she found the real bulge she’d noticed.

"You stole my underwear," she hissed.

"You left them out," he croaked. He looked ready to fuck his mission and her in one, and she nudged him away from her with a shoulder, releasing his pocket.

And her claim on her panties. "Which ones?"

He grinned like a wolf. "Those pretty purple ones."

"And what else," she said, lifting an eyebrow. She swiped at his leg where the pocket bulged with phone and her purple panties (her favorite pair but somehow more intensely favorite in his pocket, close to his body heat).

"Um."

"Richard."

His ears went pink like they had outside the Jewish deli when he'd admitted to his paranoia. His craft she realized now. Not paranoid. Healthy spy craft. Damn.

"I took one of your - uh - I took a photo."

She tilted her head.

He slowly reached into his pocket like a shamed little boy confessing, and he withdrew a curled-edges photograph from a train ride she barely remembered.

She'd been twenty or so, heading back into the city from some place in Pennsylvania with her dad. Before it had gotten as bad as it had. The last of his good days, before she knew what he'd been doing all night. He'd clicked the camera and she'd turned in surprise and he'd said landscape, and it had been true, the vista before the train window had been amazing.

He'd given her those photos he'd had made at the drug store and she'd never done anything with them. It was only the side of her face, mostly her hair in a wave and the old-fashioned camera she'd been using at the time, images collected on black and white that she still had somewhere, and the wide window of the train, the blur of trees morphing into towns outside. Her fingers against the glass, splayed.

She handed the photo back.

It showed nothing of her but a woman on a train. It meant - everything.

More than it should.

"You need to go," she choked out.

He nodded and tucked the photo carefully back into his pocket, tapped the flap as if to be sure it was closed. "You're right. Flight won't wait for me."

Not what she'd meant but that was fine.

He leaned in and his fingers caressed her throat, up to her jaw. "Let me call you," he whispered, and kissed her before she could say yes or no.

His kiss was soft and aching and it - more than anything - made her want him.

He left while her eyes were still closed.

\-----

She had four hours before roll call at the Twelfth, and she was already dressed and geared up and alone in her apartment. (Strange how two weeks ago the vest and the utility belt had begun to weigh so heavily they'd felt like burdens each morning and now they felt like armor, steel plating, guards over her heart and the new thing that struggled there, like a seed in dark soil). 

She opened the refrigerator and scanned the interior, surprised at all the selection. Fruit from the corner grocery that he had picked up on every walk home, but which they had never managed to finish: half-empty bag of grapes, a pile of strawberries, one last full pint of blueberries because he ate them like candy, (had eaten them), a lone apple. And the vegetables leftover from the soup he'd attempted the second time around (which they had dumped in favor of fucking on her counter, and then the table, and then in her bathroom on the way to the shower and finally in her bed where he'd woken her with blueberries or grapes one and then they'd fucked again while she'd been ravenous the whole time but for what? who?). 

Lots of styrofoam, she noted, taking out the apple and rubbing it on her pant leg. Remy's, mostly, turkey burgers and BBQ ribs and that whiskey chicken thing she'd only been able to eat half of before exhaustion had wound her down. The fridge even held three milkshakes they hadn't gotten around to. Plus a cupcake in its box on the counter. 

She bit into the apple and let the fridge door fall shut. Dinner was evident, though lunch would be nonexistent or grabbed on the way to a call, as usual.

In four hours. Was he on the subway right now? How did he do that and avoid the multiple surveillance cameras, the sheer mass of people who would see him? She had to admit he'd been adept at playing down his masculinity, his size, the strength inherent in his arms and hands and shoulders. He dressed to camouflage his capability, and she had actually thought him skinny when he'd started following her on the subway. 

(Would he follow someone else? No, no he had to leave on mission. Ireland. He'd pushed off his Sunday night flight to leave early this morning; she had known he was supposed to leave, and he hadn't known she'd known that, and he absolutely had to leave.)

(Right?)

A spy. 

A spy knew things. Richard Castle knew things. He knew how to use his fingers and his mouth and his damn crooked smile to steal panties and photographs and even these four hours before work where she was just daydreaming about those fingers and mouth and smile.

Holy shit, she was worthless.

Beckett chucked the apple towards the trash can and grabbed her keys. Her gun was in lock-up at the Twelfth, and she should have changed clothes there too; she knew better. Going out in full uniform in December without her weapon in its holster. Stupid. 

The vest was reassuringly snug. 

She could go into the Twelfth now. Even though she had hours to kill. Because she had hours. It was always open, home away from - whatever this was.

She locked her door after her and set off down the stairs, couldn't help comparing her trek to his, what steps he might be descending now to what lonesome contact or private air strip or hell, maybe just the regular fucking airport. She had no idea. He hadn't mentioned how he was getting to Ireland. 

(He would fondle her panties in his pocket as the plane took off. He would touch them and want to touch himself and he would think about her and her body and how she'd taken a couple of throat perles and swallowed him down and how he'd been unable to control himself for once in his damn life, and he would stroke the photo he'd stolen of her - sort of with her permission - and he would touch the side of her face in the image and imagine her and him and the week they'd had, and that was surely something that would last. Burned into his brain as it was seared into hers and he'd have those reminders and come back some day and want it all over again. And what would she say, do, where would she be? Another subway ride home, angry and disappointed, fraught with all the things she couldn't and hadn't yet accomplished, and he'd step up at her back and press his body to hers and say welcome home.)

Beckett stumbled on the sidewalk and quickly caught herself, shook her head. Obviously the cough medicine she'd taken last night was still in her system. She had four hours to get her head right, clear her mind. She should use the workout room at the Twelfth.

And. She might sneak down to Archives and see if the overnight guy would let her in. Sometimes the sergeant who was sweet on her would let her walk behind the gate and sit on the edge of his desk where the bulletproof glass made her outline too wavy to recognize and he would talk until he got busy and shooed her away and she would slip through the stacks and find her mother's case and touch the box and dare to open it.

This time she would take photos on her phone.

She should have taken photos of him. Proof he wasn't a mirage. Proof his cock was as huge as she remembered, which seemed ridiculous even now (no one had something that large between their legs, no one could function, holy shit, even if it was smaller when it wasn't happy to see her, but wasn't it always happy to see her?) but if she'd taken a photo-

Her subway line was just screaming up when she stepped to the platform and she had to run to make it.

And she was so surprised he wasn't on the car that she had to grab the pole to keep her balance.

He was going to Ireland.

\-----

She had a missed call on her phone.

Her surprise was so sudden and swamping that she sat back down on the locker room bench and stared at it. Unknown, blocked number.

Had he called her? It was only - okay she had no clue what time it was in Ireland but she'd just finished her workout after shift and she couldn't fathom it. Maybe it had been one of the bars her dad frequented. (Bars weren't unlisted, Beckett.) Maybe it had been the plumber the landlord had been promising. (Right. The landlord was never going to fix the pipes because fixing the pipes meant exposing the studs and replacing them with copper pipes which were fucking expensive. He'd rather deal with the water damage from a slow leak.)

She shoved her phone back into her bag and yanked out the rubber band instead, scraped her wet hair back into a pony tail. She had already locked up her gun in its holster upstairs in the vault, and all she had to do now was secure her vest and the clean uniform, take home the dirty one, and go.

Just go.

She had photos of her mother's autopsy file on her phone.

All she had to do was go.

Beckett laced her converse, pulled the tongues out to keep the shoes from rubbing during her walk home, and then shouldered her bag. She adjusted the strap across her chest and patted the pocket where her phone rested, reassuring herself that it was still there.

She would recreate the autopsy file. That would be-

A good first step. 

And okay, yes, her stomach churned at the thought. She had images behind her eyelids that she couldn't escape, photos from the crime scene technician that she'd paged through as she'd gone for the more aloof, distanced autopsy report. 

She had seen a few close up photos of her mother's wounds. Her mother's wounds. Oh, God. Oh, God, this was too much. She had photos on her phone of her mother's violent and terrible-

Her phone buzzed. She jerked and clapped her hand over the pocket, managed to keep from stumbling outside the precinct in front of everyone. She kept her palm to the pocket as if to quiet it, and she hurried past the perimeter of the door cameras before slipping her phone out.

(Why? Did it matter if cameras recorded her answering a phone? She'd already let slip the phone had alerted her by practically falling on her face; it wasn't like someone couldn't connect his call with her reaction-)

Unknown number.

She stared at it for too long, undecided, and it went to voicemail. But no message was left. No contact made.

Telemarketer.

He wasn't calling her. That was so supremely irrational. He had said when he was settled which was guy speak for - (spy guy speak for) - later, babe - which meant never. Settled could be anything. Settled could be when he was finished with the whole damn deep cover mission. Settled had very carefully not been tonight.

She knew better. 

And parsing his statement for meaning was pathetic. 

She had this damn autopsy file to recreate first. She needed to find a way to connect her phone to her computer and enlarge the photos so she could see the finer details, the things no one had bothered to study. She was the daughter; she would know if something was - was off.

Beckett took the steps down into the subway and waited on the platform with the dinner crowd; there was never a time in the city where no one was waiting for a subway line, where no one was crowding Time Square or hurrying one place or another. 

She was never alone here.

This was her parents’ city. She had been that teenager slouched against the subway tile waiting for the line that would take her out, away from home, into a borough she and her friends were exploring, testing their limits. She had been that little girl holding her father’s hand, stern injunctions to hold on to me, and being so pleased when the doors had opened and she had stepped on without tripping or rushing, like a native.

Kate settled in a seat at the back, the stale scent of trapped body odor reminding her, suddenly, of him.

Not that he smelled like the subway, but it was the musk of his body over hers-

She had no cell service in the subway tunnels. 

Beckett rubbed the back of her neck, still damp where her wet hair rested, and she pulled the rubber band out to redo it. She put it in a knot instead and circled her arms around her bag in her lap, studied the few people in her car.

The little girl and her father, the cluster of teenagers, an older man who had been in the first seat when they’d gotten on - she remembered Castle’s way of making up stories about people, how he had given them ‘legends’ - lives - how he knew where they were going based on the way they dressed or how they talked.

She studied, but she saw people. Not stories. She saw exhaustion and nervous determination and irritation. She saw alcoholism on the elderly man, the wobble of his hands and the brown bag between his feet, and maybe that was a story.

A story she didn’t know the end to.

She had no cell service in the tunnels, but she slid out her phone and checked again.

Twenty-one images. There were twenty-one photos on her phone’s limited memory, the max, and she’d gotten almost all of the coroner’s report, though none of the secondary findings.

And three missed calls.

She didn’t want to be here.

She wanted to be anywhere but here.

This life.

\-----

After slogging through the subway station and up to the street, her NYPD coat overheating her, sweat sticking to the places where her hair had already made damp, she felt like she needed another shower.

She debated a bath.

She had the photos on her phone but-

Bath. Definitely. She deserved it. She’d had a cold last week and she’d indulged a little more than she should have, but she’d had zero time to herself. A glass of wine, maybe-

No.

Not today. Never drink to feel better; drink to feel even better.

She was not yet at even better. A hot bath and a book, stop thinking about the photos on her phone that she needed to figure out how to upload to even begin this thing. Uploading meant a cord she probably didn’t have, a lot of poorly-worded directions from some dubious internet site that would only infect her computer with a virus.

Bath was in order.

She opened the hot faucet as wide as it would go - the damn pipes; she had learned the tricks for this place - and then she began shedding her shell. The NYPD coat, the heavy winter one that they wouldn’t replace short of toxic spillage, she carried back out into the living room and hung in the closet where it belonged.

The rest she peeled off her body one by one wherever she happened to be, steadfastly ignoring the scatter of clothing through her apartment. (He had taken her purple underwear with him.) She stepped out of the serviceable black lycra bikini panties and dropped them on the floor beside her bed, and then she bent down and snagged the first book she found.

(The bed still smelled like him. Oh God.) She hurried back down the hall, shivering, and opened the bathroom door, stepped inside, through the rising steam. She shut the door to keep in the ambient heat, carried the book to the tub and checked the water level.

Almost perfect and the temperature was edging towards scalding, so she flipped off the hot water faucet and turned on the cold. As usual, the water that came out wasn’t tap cold but a shade better than lukewarm, and she let it run as she stepped into the bath.

Fuck, her body ached.

She had bruises on top of bruises, not to mention her shoulder was black and blue from the bullet graze. The bandage had long since come off - she couldn’t stand the way it itched, and Rick was active, and it just hadn’t mattered after an orgasm or two - but now she could see the place where the butterfly tape had irritated her skin and the wound needed to be cleaned. Not to mention how raw her inside thighs were.

She hissed as the water burned between her legs, but she resolutely submerged her whole body up to her neck.

She tilted her head back against the porcelain, reminding herself of how good it had been getting to this battered state, and damn had it been good. With her eyes closed, the water licked her collarbones and she could recall the heat of him at her back as they stood before the bathroom mirror, his hands exploring, not claiming so much as appreciating. His voice in her ear as he spoke dirty, possessive things straight to her heart, an arrow to her cunt.

He had fucked her twice standing up in front of the mirror. She had gripped the back of his neck and tried to torque her body into his and away from his at the same time, it had been that intense.

Oh, hell.

Kate opened her eyes, ran a wet hand down her face and stared up at the ceiling. She turned her head and reached for the book she’d left on the little candle stand beside the tub, tugging it into her.

Kafka’s Castle. 

He’d named himself after the damn book. She had never been able to get past the endless absurd bureaucracy that Kafka took such pains to detail. Castle had found something kin in it, had discovered something of himself in these pages.

She was getting the book wet, but she opened it anyway, started it from the beginning.

Better than replaying all the places and times and positions they’d had sex.

(Who was she kidding? It wasn’t better, it was just marginally less pathetic.)

There's no quiet place here on earth for our love, not in the village and not anywhere else, so I picture a grave, deep and narrow, in which we could clasp each other in our arms as with clamps, and I would hide my face in you, and you would bury your face in me, and no one would ever see us.

\-----

She wrapped the robe tighter, tying off the belt, and then nudged the heat up on the thermostat, just until she heard the radiator clatter as it started up. She rubbed her arms briskly, gathered another blanket from the back of the couch and drew it around her shoulders (you look like a little kid playing at Superman).

She moved finally into her cramped office space and booted up her iMac, patting its blue shell as she sank into the desk chair. She pulled one knee up and rested her chin on it, watched the grey screen as it cycled through.

There was an ache behind one eye that wouldn’t quit. She had taken three doses of pain reliever already today - for the shoulder and the bruised hips and the swollen feeling between her legs - and she probably should leave it for now.

(She liked feeling swollen. She reveled in the factuality of bruises and a raw cunt, the actuality of her condition which said it wasn’t only in her head.)

The computer made that welcoming noise and she reached reluctantly, determinedly for her phone.

She had a text message waiting. Blocked number. Sent an hour ago while she was in the bath, procrastinating about the photos - or merely building her defenses.

Check your email.

It was him. No one else gave such haughty commands without a trace of doubt that they would be followed.

For a moment, she almost considered disobeying. But her cunt still tingled every time she shifted in the chair and he had stolen her panties for nefarious reasons. Best to find out sooner rather than later.

Beckett opened her browser and waited for it load, but the connection was lightning fast, much faster than it’d been last week. Before Richard had been messing around with her computer (I have to do a couple of deep backgrounds, baby).

She logged into her email and there was a message in her inbox with a string of random keystrokes (letters, numbers, symbols) as the return address. Every instinct in her as a cop and a fairly adept computer user told her it was spam, but she opened it anyway. (She had a Mac, and Richard had installed shit on here she knew he had, and what kind of virus could get through all that?)

The email had a link, and only a link, in the body of the message.

And she clicked it. Didn’t even hesitate.

It popped open a new window and cycled through a grey screen with tabs along the top, greyed out tabs, and for an instant, she thought she’d been phished.

And then a box dropped down from one of the tabs, giving her a black screen, a stilted image with artifacts that made it blocky, and then the black screen again. This time with an icon highlighted in a small box at the bottom of the black box and-

“Hey, baby, finally.”

Her jaw dropped. The green light was on at the top of her camera and she had no control over her mouse any longer-

And Richard Castle’s face was coming in sharp and clear over a video link on her fucking computer.

“Huh. I think there’s something wrong. Hang on, love, I’m getting a frozen image and no audio-” He was leaning forward into view and she could see the dingy wood paneling behind him, the flat matte of a sleeping bag.

“No, I-” She had to clear her throat and sit up straight, leaning into the computer. She could see herself in the small box at the bottom, what she looked like from his view of things. “I’m here,” she said faintly.

His head popped up. His smile as white as the sun. “You’re here.” He sank back and the picture shifted with him and now she saw he was using a laptop (fuck, those laptops could do this?) and leaning back against the sleeping bag. “And I’m here. We’re both here.”

“You - how did you-”

“It’s an Army link,” he said, shrugging, but his eyes darted away from the screen. “My mates are coming in.”

“It’s late,” she got out.

He glanced back at her, a frown creasing his forehead. “I tried earlier, baby, but you didn’t answer, and I couldn’t figure out when your shift ended.” He swallowed and his eyes darted away again and now she could hear the guys coming into the place - wherever he was holed up in Ireland - the rowdy drunk guys getting home from the bar. “I know waitressing makes you tired.”

His eyes urged hers. She glanced behind her, jumped up, tossed her NYPD turtleneck onto the couch and out of view. Just in case. She sank back into the seat, fast, and settled before the screen as she had been, her knee up and an arm hooked around it.

“I meant for you,” she said finally, breathless, heart rushing. “What’s the time difference? You’re ahead, I know-”

“Five hours,” he said quickly. And then gave her a slow nod of his head as if to say that was true. Oh, he was using her as cover; he’d said something about that, his fake American girlfriend, something, but that meant he was telling them she was in New York. Or a city in a similar time zone. Because five hours was correct.

“Then it’s three in the morning there,” she said. “They’re just getting home?”

“Yeah, but they’re practically passed out.” He shifted and she saw a hand flop in his direction which he batted away. “Hey, piss off. I’m talking to my girl.”

A drunk shout, someone calling him Mikey.

A strange ripple went through her as Mikey’s face came over Castle’s own, leering at the camera - at her, in her silk robe and nothing else, the blanket hooked awkwardly over the back of the chair. She drew it down into her lap but she raised an eyebrow at ‘Mikey’, her boyfriend who was running with an arms dealer.

A couple of guys crowded in at the screen, also leering, jeering at them. “Rufus, sod off. Oi. Get.”

He was shoved away, Castle grumbling, shouting back at the other guys, his Michael Leary accent impeccable.

Accent. Wow.

“Oi, shut yer hole. Let me talk to my girl.... no, you are. No, you are. Don’t make me come-” And then he lunged up, the laptop left on his pitiful black sleeping bag and a tussle half in view and half out before something sharp was said and something got cracked and then Richard was back.

Hair mussed, shirt crooked, but grinning like the devil at her. “Hey, love. You and me now, sweetheart.”

But it felt like it was him and her and this other guy - this guy who slept on a sleeping bag in some asshole’s apartment, Mikey and company dragging home at three in the morning after pub hopping all night.

“You didn’t go out?” she murmured, not sure who she was talking to.

“I wanted to talk to you,” he said, grinning. And then his face changed. Something both infinitely softer, but also harder. “I needed the chance to touch base with local.” A pursing of his lips, like she had provided the ideal excuse, and she had basically but-

“Who - who are you staying with?”

“Aw, that’s Mikey and his crew. They might get me some work. Said I have to stick it out with them and prove myself first. I’ll go out tomorrow, sweetheart, don’t worry.”

“Drinking,” she said, chewed on the inside of her cheek.

“Baby,” he murmured, all manner of reassurance in his voice, both cover and real. 

She thought it was real. I can handle this. He was a fucking covert agent, of course he wasn’t going to drink himself blind.

“I know, because of your dad, you’re worried,” he said quickly, though his eyes said forgive me. “I told the guys. They get it. They think I’m whipped, but Mikey said he’d make ‘em go easy on me. But you know I can handle my liquor.” His fingers pressed hard against his chest like it was some kind of sign, and the way he’d emphasized those words as he’d said them.

It was all code and double talk. She felt - lost.

And then his face changed again and that hardness slid through, and somehow she was seeing that eager soldier who had followed her onto the subway and carried her father down the hall to his room and untied his shoes.

“Kate, sweetheart, it doesn’t work on me.” His fingers came out and touched the screen, going dark where the camera couldn’t follow. She lifted her hand and couldn’t help reaching back, unsurprised when the screen was cold and faintly staticky.

“You’re more than them,” she said, the words coming out of her mouth in something like certainty. “You’re more.”

“They’re gone,” he murmured. “You don’t have to-”

“It’s not pretend,” she sighed, tilting her cheek to her drawn up knee. Tracing his features with her eyes. “It’s not a lie.”

He swallowed and nodded and his head dipped. “I - needed to hear that.” His eyes flicked up to the screen - to hers - hesitant, shy. Shy? “Can I see you?”

“You are seeing me.”

“Will you - will you show me what I’m missing? Cause, baby, I am really missing it.”

She laughed, biting her thumb as her eyes met his across five hours of future time and space. “Maybe you should find a bathroom, hotshot.”

He grinned, feral and intense, and she knew she’d been right all along.

He had been thinking about her for miles.

\-----

While he got adjusted to the grimy tile floor - she could see how dirty it was from the poor quality of the laptop camera so she knew it was bad - Beckett closed her blinds and turned off the overhead light.

"Wait," he said from the computer. "Kate?"

She came back. "Does that make it too dark?" she asked. She glanced at the tiny box at the bottom that showed what it must look like to him, but she couldn't tell.

"Can't see you at all, sweetheart."

"Is it enough with the lamp?" She reached to the desk and clicked it on. "It's just so bright with the overhead."

"Feels naughty?"

She laughed, glanced at him from the side of her eyes. He had spread a ratty towel in the bathtub and was climbing in, porcelain and clawfoot and really rather beautiful for such a dismal-looking place. The laptop gave her an unsteady angle as he climbed.

"Um, feels something," she admitted. "Do you need the light?"

"I don't know. Sit back a little and let me see what I can see."

Was she really letting this man order her around like a 1-900 operator? Well, and if so, didn't that mean she was really the one in control?

Kate sat back in the desk chair and lifted an eyebrow.

"No good, baby. Do you mind doing this with the lights on?"

A weird sensation chased down her spine, but instead of replying (her voice would crack, she knew it), she got back up and flipped the overhead on again. When she came back to the computer, she draped the blanket over the chair because - well, fuck - because she could wash the blanket.

She sat cross-legged in the chair and placed her hands on her knees, expectant, a little oddly anxious, and studied him on the other side of the world.

His hair had been styled - the floppish part was a little spiky with gel. She wanted to touch it. Was it hard and crunchy? "Who did your hair?"

"Huh?" His eyes were devouring her and it took him a moment to focus. When he did, his smile was that of the predator once more, but he lifted a hand to his head and crushed the spikes with his palm. "You like? I did it in the terminal at LAX."

"You went through LAX." She could imagine it. "As - as this?"

"After a military flight from New York, yeah. Regular guy, then. I got a locker in Newark with all of my Castle stuff, so that coat is safe. Promise."

She shook her head, amused by their conversation, by his change, but confused too - the video conferencing, the way sometimes it was Rick looking back at her and sometimes - whoever this was. And what were they doing, small talk while he unbuttoned his pants?

She swallowed hard. Watched his fingers as he fumbled one-handed at his crotch.

"Um. Mikey?"

He was watching her too. Lips quirked, but something in his eyes was harder when she'd called his undercover name. "Naw, sweetheart. Not that, not him. You and me, Kate."

She chewed on her lip, realized her own hands were playing at the tie to her robe. "I... I've never done this before. Something like - I can see you but I can't even touch you."

He grinned, but he looked hurt. Had she hurt his feelings? His hands stilled on his pants. "You can't touch me, no, but you can touch yourself, baby. And you can watch. Remember when I asked you to let me watch?"

"But then you touched me," she murmured. Her eyes were fixed on his hands at his pants. She lifted her gaze, tugging a little at the knot in her robe. "It doesn't work out for me, Rick. Not - alone. Most times I just can't-"

"I'll talk you through it, love. I'm right here, and believe me, watching you - that's erotic as fuck. Anything you do - just seeing how you're watching me right now."

Her eyes jerked up to his again, and she knew she was blushing, and damn it. Damn it. They had done so much together already, this shouldn't be so stupidly intimate. "You first," she told him. "Take off your pants."

"If you take off your robe."

"I said, you first, Castle."

A bloom of lust swamped the blue of his eyes, the harsh bathroom light unable to hide the way his whole body reacted to her. He was already shifting in the bathtub to get a hand under his waistband, shedding his clothes as quickly as he could.

The laptop pitched and tilted, and then he cursed and settled it somewhere - a table? a wire rack over the rim? - and everything was steady. Entirely steady. The angle was better too, and it made his thighs and ass seem thick, powerful, his chest tapering at his ribs and then expanding widely to his shoulders, and even though the proportions were off, a little not quite right, her lips were tingling, her fingers.

He yanked his boxers off and his cock was already hard. And huge.

"Oh, God," she husked.

Castle's hips shifted in the tub and he closed a hand around himself. He leaned forward into her line of sight, blocking all of that naked glory, and she could tell he was pushing up the volume. 

Headphones, she thought stupidly, wished he had them so that her words wouldn't echo on tile but in his ears instead. "Castle-"

"Now you," he said roughly, sitting back. He was slowly stroking his balls, his thumb circling the base of his shaft.

She was flushed, hot all over, and she tore at the silk tie of her robe, cursing herself for the knot instead of the bow, cursing all of it as her fingers fumbled. She had to withdraw her arms from the sleeves instead and shuck it over her head, wriggling to get past the knotted belt.

Her hair came undone from the pony tail and spilled on her bare shoulders.

"Oh, fuck, baby, I love your hair, falling down like that when you ride me."

"Oh, God," she moaned, cupped her breast without thinking, pinching her nipple.

"That's it, sweetheart."

She stuttered to a stop, her self-awareness getting in her own way. Rick was fondling his balls with one hand, his other palm pressed to his abs and rubbing slowly up and down as he watched her. 

Her lips were swollen. As if she’d been kissed, her lines smudged by the force of his assault.

But he was behind a screen, over an ocean, five hours in the future. 

And yet she kneaded her breast and crept a hand down to her sex. “Say something,” she rasped, touching herself. “Oh, God, you have to talk to me-”

“You’re so beautiful, Kate. Baby, lift your hips a little so I can see you. That’s it, sweetheart. There you go. So slick and hot for me.”

She groaned and tilted her head back, fingers cautiously pushing through her folds. But she shivered and had to drop her chin, see him, had to see him, otherwise it was just - the white ceiling and her empty apartment - and that deadened her heart faster than anything.

“Look at me, baby. There you go. Aw, your breasts are mottled pink, like they get when you’re excited.” He grinned but his lips twisted as he circled his cock with his hand. “Fuck. You excited for me, Kate?”

“I’m - getting there,” she muttered, grinding her teeth. She squirmed in the chair, not enough space, not enough flesh, not enough. And she wanted closer, had to be right up against him or this would never work.

“Getting there is good, baby. That’s good. You’re wet now, aren’t you?”

“I’m so wet,” she gasped, hips tilting up.

“Fuck, that’s it. Look at me, Kate, look - fuck, that’s it, sweetheart. Push your fingers inside, no more teasing, you don’t want to be teased right now. Fuck yourself on your fingers-”

She cried out, unavoidably obeying, thrusting two fingers inside herself. But it was tight and cramped and she couldn’t tilt enough to get deep, to get as deep and wide as his cock had been inside her. She needed more.

Beckett dragged her foot out from under her thigh and crashed it on top of the desk, skittering off the keyboard. Castle cursed and his hips bucked in response, and she untangled her other leg and propped her heel up on the other side, straddling the monitor now.

“Fuck, fuck, baby. Oh, fuck me, sweetheart, that’s perfect. You can get so high, so deep that way. Fuck yourself on your fingers, love, just for me.”

She whined and bucked her hips into her fingers, teeth grinding as she tried to reach for it, reach it. Castle was rigid in his own hands, his cock pulsing with the beat of his heart, and she could feel it inside her instead of her fingers, his cock inside her, shoving, making his own way through her raw and abused flesh.

“Fuck me, Castle,” she groaned. “Please. Please. I need-”

“You’re so gorgeous when you’re desperate for me. Do you know what that does to me? To my cock? Seeing you writhing in that chair all because of my voice?”

“Please,” she panted. Please, please-

“Almost there, baby. Almost, gonna fuck you so hard the second I put my hands on you-” He was throttling his cock, his nostrils flaring, thrusting his hips upward. So damn rigid. So hard. His grip looked so damn choking. “Ah, fuck. Fuck, you need to be close. Beckett. Fuck. You need to come.”

“I can’t,” she whimpered. Hips arching, heels digging into the wood. “I can’t. I need you-”

“Fuck. Fuck. I can see your fingers disappearing inside you, your pretty pinks and those dirty brown folds, all the way to your ass. I want to lick you, my mouth right there, sucking at your fingers-” 

She cried out, stiffening in the chair, the backs of her thighs burning. She rolled her head to stare at him. “I’m - gonna come. Oh God. Castle. Please.”

“Fuck, Kate, you need to come right now,” Castle growled. “I want to bite your breast and suck on you so hard. Come.”

She screamed as she orgasmed, hand cramping, crushing her clit. Her hips bucked and worked and thrust and writhed, she was tight, too tight, it wasn’t enough, she wasn’t-

“So ripe, so fucking swollen for me, soaked in your own come, the sound of you falling apart, fuck, fuck, oh fuck, I’m coming so hard-”

She tore her gaze to his cock, and she watched as he erupted, the fierce way his hands abused himself as his come shot from the end of his cock, and his face. Fuck. He was staring intently at her, ravenous, swallowing her whole, and all her wound-up, tight tension cracked - splintered - shattered as her second orgasm ripped her right open.

\-----

She had slumped in the chair, her cheek against the rubber-padded arm. She cracked open her eyes at the sound of his voice.

“Ah, hell. Sweetheart. How beautiful you look, legs splayed open with your hand limp there. So beautiful. I would kiss you, love. You know I would, I have before, trail my mouth up your body until I got to those parted lips-”

She blinked, staring at him, rousing.

“Hey, there, sweetheart.” He was smiling, that leonine look in his eyes as he took her in. “Twice?”

She shivered and drew a knee in, her fingers withdrawing. “Twice.”

He purred. And yeah, she couldn’t possibly hear that, but she knew that look on his face, that smug satisfaction. “Twice,” he said with relish. “Good?”

She hummed, not quite agreement but it wasn’t disagreement either. “I’d do that again,” she said, pressing her knees together. Straightening up. “Though it seems kind of - I don’t know.”

“It’s not ideal,” he sighed. His fingers were tracing designs-

oh, fuck

-in his own come.

She bit her lip and sat forward, let her eyes linger on his body. She resisted the urge to touch the screen, knowing it would be glass, static, nothing at all like the heat of his flesh and the tension in his body when she scratched her nails across his stomach.

“But it’s better than nothing,” she finished. “Much better.”

Castle shifted in the tub, his shoulders tight agains the sloped sides. “Yeah,” he said, his throat bobbing. His smile was shy. “Yeah, it is. I - best I could do on short notice, but I’ll work on the connection quality.”

“Plenty of quality, Rick.” She curled her legs up into the chair and shrugged the blanket from the back. Wrinkled her nose. “Sticky.”

“You never seemed to mind before.”

She huffed, flicking her fingers at him. “When you’re here, you’re already rolling on top of me and going again.”

He grinned at that, reached out and dragged the laptop closer. “Yeah. Would be now too if I was there.”

“Might be me on top, that kind of orgasm,” she parried.

Castle let out a breath; she could see how he was struggling not to be aroused. “That kind? You’d come the moment I pushed inside you, that kind.”

She chewed on her lip, nodded shortly.

“I know you, baby.” He leaned forward, arms hooked loosely at his knees. “I know how your body wants it. I had almost nine days to study you, the way you move, how you look when you come the hardest, the noises you make.”

“You think I wasn’t?”

“Wasn’t?”

“Paying attention. Studying you.” She let the blanket fall off one shoulder, working the office chair closer to the desk, closer to the computer. “How your eyes roll back when I suck you off.”

“Heaven. Transported, love.”

“And your fingers tighten - usually gripping my ass - when I rock my hips down on you just that last-”

“Last inch,” he groaned. “Fuck, yes.”

“And when I kegel-”

“What’s that?” he said roughly. “Kegel. What’s that?”

She took a deep breath. “Kegel exercises. Strengthens the pelvic-”

“Oh, fuck, when you squeeze around my cock, in-inside you, that grip, fuck-”

“Are you hard again, Castle?”

“Shit.”

“I think so,” she murmured. “You’d have fucked me hard by now, love. But you always come right back, you always need more.”

“Are you gonna touch yourself or-”

“Just you,” she sighed, her eyes tracing the sight of him. His cock was bobbing as blood filled it again, stiffening. He was rubbing his hands up and down his thighs, hips bumping up a little. 

He looked beautiful. All because she was talking to him. A little breast, her nipple hard and tight, one knee drawn up - and her mouth.

The words. “You know I love it when you come back for more,” she rasped. “Dazed and kinda stunned, that blissed feeling, but then there you are, still inside me, Rick, still held inside me and you’re hardening again.”

“I - can’t help it. I can’t control myself when I’m inside you-”

“I know, baby. That’s the best part. I have you so completely. You’re hard for me again right now - and you just came pretty fierce. Didn’t you?”

“Like my guts were ripped out of me.”

“So completely,” she sighed. “If I straddle you, I love bearing down hard. So that your cock hits that perfect angle.”

“You’re so fucking tight like that. On top of me. So fucking tight. It’s exquisite.”

“You should touch yourself,” she said, breathing fast. “You should circle your fingers at your head and squeeze it tightly - like it feels when you first enter me.”

“Fuck.” And he was, his shoulders crowding in, his head dipped towards himself as if he could put his own mouth on his cock. As if he was drawn in by a string. “Fuck, Kate, don’t stop.”

“When I grind down on you,” she growled. “That’s the best feeling. Grinding down, forcing it harder, tighter. Forcing-”

“You like it,” he harshed. “Forced. You want me to tie you up to the bedrail and fuck you hard, straining against the leather.”

“Cuffs,” she croaked.

“Cuffs,” he breathed. “What am I punishing you for, Beckett? What do you deserve?”

“I don’t listen,” she husked. Her sex was wet, and she squirmed, touching herself, two fingers slick again. “I don’t do what you want me to.”

“The cuffs rattle every time you yank on them,” he groaned. His eyes caught hers. She rubbed herself harder, hips jerking. He was strangling the head of his cock with his whole hand. “I drag my hand down your body and shove your thighs apart.”

Her legs dropped open, her fingers working herself without pause. “My breasts-”

“You want me so badly. I won’t touch your breasts. I won’t do it. You beg me-”

“Please, fuck, please-”

“But this is your punishment. You deserve this. What you did. This is serious, Beckett. You’re going to fucking take me.”

“Just let me come, just please let me come-”

“How fucking hard your thighs are, trembling for me. You know what I like to do to punish you? Crush your clit with my thumb and suck-”

She cried out, her orgasm snatching her up by its jaws. Shaking her.

“Kate, don’t stop,” he groaned. “Don’t stop, baby. I’m so close.”

She lifted a trembling hand to the screen. “You fuck me right through my orgasm and keep on going. You don’t stop, you never stop,” she cried. “Fuck me, Castle, fuck me hard-”

“Oh, God-”

“Make me,” she growled. “Give me what I deserve-”

“Fuck. Fuck, Beckett, you deserve everything.” And then he seized, that terrible stillness like death, and then his climax crashed over him, that full-body rush that seemed to be pulled right out by the roots, his toes curling, his bellow echoing on tile.

“That’s it, baby, so good, it’s so good,” she called. “Pump yourself as you come, get it all out, I want all of it.”

“Ah, fuck,” he groaned. He was watching her, eyes feverish, chafing his cock with his hand.

She touched her fingers to her lips. “I wish it was my mouth,” she sighed.

He snarled, his hips jagging sideways, and he ejaculated hard one last time.

Kate licked her fingers for the taste of herself, and it almost tasted like him.

\-----

He was still breathing hard and canted in the bathtub when she shrugged the blanket around her torso, gathered herself back together like pieces - here and there - like armor.

"You with me?" she said, rubbing two fingers over her lips as she watched him. Everything felt sensitive, aware, that sensation she'd had on the subway when she had first known he was following her. That first look, and knowing immediately that she would confront him and that it would feel like power for once, having some kind of power. "Riiiick."

He blinked dazedly at her and shifted forward, moving as if underwater, that same expression on his face that he'd had in the shower that last night together. 

Worship.

It heightened - everything. Her breasts were heavy and her nipples rubbed the fleece, her fingers were tingling, her lips swollen - both places, swollen and raw. His regard for her.

"I'm with you," he husked, but the way he said it-

Matched emphasis on the pronouns, part of her realized, cataloged, a holdover from studying interrogation tactics at the police academy. He had placed equal stress on I'm and you as if mating them. Not with. The two of them.

Not answering the question she'd asked, but the one she hadn't known she had wanted answered.

"You're with me," she affirmed. You and me.

"Tell me a story," he mumbled. He was cradling the laptop on his chest, all weird angles, like he was curling up in the bath tub with it.

"No, sweetheart. Clean yourself up first," she sighed. "I'm okay with sticky, but you don't need to be in that bath tub all night."

His face lit up, though she didn't understand why, but he did shift the laptop back onto the ledge - it was a wire basket, she could see now, the kind that hung over the rim and offered a place to put a book, soap, whatever. "I'll jump out and rinse out the tub - um - myself a little. Wanna watch me?"

She grinned back. "Watch you shower? Yeah, course. Just don't get the laptop wet. Leave me hanging."

His chest puffed up, mock indignation. Little boy pride. "I am not leaving you hanging, Kate Beckett. You came three times."

"Mm."

"What?" he insisted, already climbing out of the tub and moving the laptop to the - oh, the toilet lid. Really, Castle? Whatever. He'd have to get used to it, stuck there with all those other guys. "Beckett, what was that noise for? You don't fake it, so I know I'm right."

"Think it was more like four, Richard."

His face glowed. "Four? Really? When-"

"Just at the end there. Little - sparks. Mm, you know, like when I come after you come inside me."

"You what?"

She laughed, sat up a little straighter, leaning into the computer. "You didn't know?"

"Every time?"

"Not every time," she huffed. "Just - most of the time. It's not even a - well, I mean, it's what I would have called an orgasm back - you know - um - before I met you."

And, okay, now he looked insufferably proud of himself. "Really."

"Shut up."

"No, please. Continue."

"Take your shower, you arrogant bastard."

He grinned and actually shook his ass at her, turning to twist on the faucet. There was a European-style handheld, much like the one in her own clawfoot, though hers was mounted, and he threw her looks over his shoulder as he stepped in, like he was parading around for her.

"Stupid peacock," she muttered.

But of course he didn't hear her. He just scrubbed his chest with a bar of soap, wriggled his ass like she cared at all about the water coursing off those tight curves.

Okay, maybe she did.

Kate settled into her chair to wait, running a hand through her hair, shifting to feel the wetness between her legs. Watching him.

She had nowhere special to be anyway.

\-----

He was scrubbing his chest with the same damn towel he'd used to line the tub for their makeout session. (Makeout? Fuck, more like mutual masturbation. Mutual need. Story-telling time.)

"Gross, Castle."

"It's the only clean one I got."

"It's not clean," she shot back. She was sitting on her feet in the chair; she'd found herself shifting while he'd showered, as if to get a better look, the camera's angle cutting off the top of his head, his elbow as he raised his arm. And she was still kind of working herself up here.

"It's clean enough."

She rolled her eyes.

"I can hear you rolling your eyes at me. You wanna come over here and do my laundry, Beckett, or what?"

"Or what," she snarked. "I wouldn't do your laundry if you were here, you asshole."

He pouted but tossed the towel to the floor - definitely not clean; she really hoped he did the fucking laundry - and then he came towards the laptop, let her see everything as he slowly pulled on his sweat pants again.

"Is it cold there?" she asked. Idle, really, but he yelped and cupped his cock in his hand, as if brandishing it.

"Does this look shrunken to you? But yeah, fuck, it's pretty cold, I think."

"You think."

He shrugged, releasing himself (she was touching herself again, beneath the blanket, idle that too, but it sent little wonderful sparks all through her as she watched him handle his own body with such careless possession. He handled her like that too sometimes.)

"You don't know if it's cold?"

"Other than the frank and beans shriveling up? Naw. I mean, it doesn't feel it. The place here - it's a shithole, honestly, so I’m not sure they even have heat - but I'm used to shitholes."

"It really is gross, Castle," she confessed, shaking her head. "Surprised you haven't caught tetanus or something by now, living in places like that."

He grinned, cocked his head. "Told you I don't get sick."

"Tetanus isn't sick," she laughed, leaning in, propping her elbows on the desk. The video had a strange lag to it now, like she was sucking up all her bandwidth. "It just happens."

"No," he said, sly little smile. "I don't get tetanus either. Or the black plague, which this place would clearly give anyone." He was running his hands through his wet hair and flicking the water off onto the floor. Clearly ready to leave the nasty bathroom.

"Go," she said. "Curl up in your mangy sleeping bag-"

“It’s not mangy.” He had cradled the laptop against his chest, and the angle now made it seem like he was right there, bringing her in against him, looking down into her eyes. “It’s serviceable, baby. Big enough for two.”

“Better not be two.” 

He flashed her an unrepentant grin even while the cold horror of her unbidden words circled down the drain of her stupid, stupid mouth. What the fuck. Of course there would be two - or there would be times when he had to - he was a spy. She had seen James Bond movies. Castle would get the job done; he had better get the job done.

“Fucking hell,” she muttered, rolling her eyes. “Big enough for two then carry me into bed with you.”

His grin widened even further. “Wanna go for a tour, baby? I’ll walk you through our place.”

“Your place with the drunk assholes.”

“Yup.” Castle was spinning the laptop around so fast her stomach rolled, but maybe it was confrontation with a place entirely unlike what she knew of Richard. Up close and personal with a cover story she couldn’t quite unthread from the Castle of it all.

He was coming out of the bathroom and moving down a short, narrow hall. Looked like he had to duck. 

“This is an old building. Built in the 1800s-”

“Are you really giving me a guided tour?”

“Shut up, Beckett, I’m working here.” He dropped his hand in front of the camera and gave her the finger, and she laughed, bubbled up with an amusement that might be slightly relieved. That was definitely Rick. “As I was saying, built in the 1800s for a modern influx of peasants looking for work-”

“Potato blight,” she interrupted.

“Smart is sexy, Beckett. But don’t make me lose my train of thought.”

“Fuck off.”

“See, yes, that’s exactly what will happen if you keep whispering dirty historical facts in my ear.”

She laughed again, sinking her chin down into the cradle of her elbow, watching him parade her through the stone and plaster hall and out into the living room. 

“This is the Ballymun district, which is home to me-” Not him, but Michael, Mikey, his cover, she supposed. “-and I’m good as gold walking the streets, but you know, neighbors cache weapons for the IRA and guy two flats over was arrested an hour after I got here.”

His sleeping bag was stretched across a horrid plaid couch with orange racing stripes down the side, and she could see - as he panned like a smug asshole - a billiards table that took up most of the tight space, as well as a swinging overhead light on a chain, two sad leather chairs, and an open doorway.

“What’s through there?”

“Kitchen. Come on, I’ll show you. No stone left unturned.” The laptop tilted as he flipped on the light switch. The kitchen was worse than the bathroom, plates stacked in the sink and over counters, food left out, boxes of cereal open and abandoned, loads of take-away containers with their hardened remains in view. “Yeah, let’s not linger. Let’s just say the beer is well-stocked.” The light flipped off and she was dizzy again as he spun back to the living room and then-

“Is that a fuzball table?” she laughed. “Pool and fuzball in that tiny little living room.”

“I should probably sleep on the pool table - cleanest thing in this place. Rufus is a fucking fanatic about his game.” The Irish brogue was back, soft, charming. It made goose bumps on her arms, raised the hair on the back of her neck, how he slid right into it, how natural it was for him to live a lie. 

“Is that another door?”

“That’s the master. Rufus and his brother. But it’s a weird configuration, because if I took you through there, there’s a door at the other end of his room that pops back out onto the hall. And then besides the bathroom, here, is this room-”

She saw him take her through the hallway again, saw the flash of the bathroom tile, and then he was opening a second door that had been behind him when he’d walked out of the bathroom first thing. A circuitous tour of the place.

“This is Liam’s room,” Castle said, voice low, nearly a hum on the speakers. “You can see why now.”

At first she didn’t catch his oblique reference to his mission, but then she saw the protest posters and equipment strewn around Liam’s room - Liam himself passed out on his unmade bed, head hanging over one end, mouth open.

Neighbors weren’t the only ones stockpiling weapons for the IRA. Shit. She thought she even saw a fucking over-the-shoulder.

Castle eased the door shut and hustled back through hallway, turning the laptop around to his face again.

“Baby, no, don’t look like that. I know what I’m doing.”

Her stomach flipped over and she scrubbed a hand down her face, sitting up straighter. “No, I know. I just - didn’t expect it so - there.”

“In your face, you mean.” He cradled the laptop so that she had that impression, all over again, of being brought up against his chest. “This is - well, the point, love.”

“How’d you - um - get to know him so fast?”

“Previous contacts. Rufus. A few words about my time in Mountjoy. Prison.”

“Oh.” She was - not used to this from him. The way he slid in and out of it, the intimacy of face to face with no way to touch him, ground herself in his body, but all the same electric connection coming through.

And for this - strange man. This wasn’t Rick, not in this moment, but even as she shivered with the thought of who he might really be under all those layers, he was mangling the sleeping bag as he crawled in, getting comfortable, his face the same eager face he’d shown her when they’d slept together that first night.

“Comfy?” he said, grinning again. Eyes blue even in the dim light of the computer’s own glow. 

“Me? No. I’m at my desk, Cas-” She shook her head, dropped the name. 

“No, don’t,” he murmured, eyes sad. “They’re all passed out. I told you. It’s okay, love.”

“I - get it,” she said. But it wasn’t that she didn’t want to call him by the name he’d given her, she just - she could see where this would be a bad habit, and dangerous to him, should she forget or slip.

This was dangerous work. Liam had a bedroom full of armament you couldn’t just get off the street, not like that, and he wanted her to call him Castle over the speakers?

“You should get headphones,” she said finally. “Me too, maybe. Keep it - between us. Just us.”

“I should’ve set this up with a laptop on your end,” he sighed. “I wish I were in bed with you right now.”

Her sternum cracked open, vital organs spilling out. “Yeah,” she admitted. But it was all too messy. “Easier to - you know - if I was in bed.”

“You shy? Can’t even say it?”

“I’m not being shy. What I told you to do to yourself was hardly shy.”

“Then say it.”

“Fine. It would be easier to fingerfuck if I was in bed, propped on pillows. Better angle of penetration. And you’d see more of me if I settled the laptop between my legs on the mattress.”

“Fuck. I hate myself for not thinking of a laptop sooner.”

“Good. Because right now I’m hating you for it too,” she snapped out. And then she tossed the blanket off her lap and spread her thighs for him, showed him how she’d been touching herself all this time, for most of this time. “Just talk to me, Rick.”

“Well, fuck. I really fucking want that laptop. Fuck, baby, you’re so wet. I can hear the noises you’re making with your fingers.”

“Liar.” She was gasping though. She was on the edge of something. It’d been building with every stupid grin and smart-ass comment, and if she weren’t careful, the sound of his voice alone could be the only trigger she would need. “Talk, Castle.”

“How does it feel, sweetheart? Your fingers rubbing and plunging inside you.”

“Desperate,” she gritted out.

“Yeah, you are, so desperate for that release. Just one more, because it’s not at all the same as being fucked, is it? It’s not the same and the orgasms aren’t as good, because in the end I’m not the one fucking you.”

“Fuck, this isn’t sexy, Rick. Get on with-”

“It’s painfully sexy. It’s pornographic, Beckett. Can you blame me for wanting to prolong it a little?”

She was already past the point of muscle fatigue, her arm shaking, fingers cramping. 

“Fine,” he sighed. His breath along the speakers so that she could almost imagine him blowing against her clit. “Beckett, grab your breast.”

She was there before he finished, torquing her nipple viciously. Twisting, pinching. Her hips jostled her foot from the chair and she slung her leg over the arm.

“Fuck, you’re on display for me. Aren’t you, baby? You like it when you’re being watched. You like knowing the lights are blazing and maybe you didn’t close the blinds all the way and someone out there could see you, catch sight of your head thrown back like that and your breasts bobbing - down there on the street, just that glimpse - and how they would know what you were doing to yourself. How they’d wonder, start to imagine, were you watching porn, so overcome you had to touch yourself?”

“Fuck,” she gasped, chest rising. Her fingers weren’t even close but his words put pictures in her head that made her grind into her hand.

“I’d yank the blinds up, all the way, let the streetlamps spill in. Turn around and haul you out of that chair, shove you up against the glass-”

“Oh, God. Rick.”

“Press your knees to the cold window pane, hold you open for me, and then I would take great pleasure in fucking you in front of the whole fucking world.”

She cried out, her orgasm snatched right out from under her only to come smashing back inside her, flying apart on the intensity of the story he’d built in her head.

\-----

“You’re tired,” he said softly. 

She roused and shook her head. “No, not really. Long day.”

“I’d say so. You were up with me this morning, and then work on top of that.”

“I’m fine,” she said, shifting in the chair as she propped her head on her hand. Scratched at her scalp as she fought a yawn. “It’s not that late.”

“It’s three in the morning.”

“Your time,” she said back. “My-”

“No, love. Three your time.”

She glanced to the computer clock. “Shit. I didn’t mean to - Castle. It’s got to be sunrise over there. You were up the same-”

“Yeah, but I don’t have to sleep.”

“Everyone has to sleep,” she muttered, rolling her eyes. But he wasn’t paying attention, his neck craned as he looked behind him.

“Hey, you’re right. Sun’s coming up. Look.” He was scrambling out from the sleeping bag and taking the laptop with him. She saw his elbow and forearm, the width of his chest, and then the grimy plastic blinds. He pulled the slats down, carelessly, and gave her a view.

He must be five floors up, and the buildings nearby were squatty, brick, but in the twilight, the landscape was washed out, colorless but for the sky.

The sun was a white disc hanging low, just having broken from the earth, and the thin clouds gave off brilliant pinks and oranges, the smear of purple across the horizon.

“It’s - beautiful,” she sighed.

For a moment, the sight lingered - Castle lingered - and then he was turning the laptop back around to himself, cradling it.

Cradling her.

Three in the morning. They had talked - teased, edged - all night. 

“You need sleep, Beckett,” he said quietly. “And as much as I’d love to stay right here, I’ve had to plug in this laptop so many damn times it’s about to burn up.”

It felt like an excuse. But she sat up straighter, folded her hands in her lap, shoulders tight. “No. I know. And you’ve - got a lot on your plate.” Be careful. “You need to go. I need to go.”

“Baby,” he sighed.

“No,” she got out, hand moving to the mouse. “Don’t. It’s sunrise - it’s late.”

But he still had control of her computer. His throat bobbed and he sank back down to the couch, put the laptop on his lap where it belonged. “It is, yeah. Kate...”

“Don’t.” Don’t look at me like that.

But his lips twisted, a feral grin taking over his face. “You’re pretty damn good at talking dirty, you know. Might have a calling, Beckett.”

She bit her lip, pressing her smile flat. “Shut up.”

“You liked it.”

“Of course I fucking liked it. Don’t be an ass.”

“Your voice pitches low, husky, like you’re caressing my cock with your words.”

“Shut up,” she huffed, but the laugh struggled up. “You’re such a blatant bully.”

“You like that too,” he growled. “My sexy American girlfriend.”

“Fuck you.” 

“You already did, love. Now say good-night to me. I’m gonna close down the connection.”

“Good bye, Castle.”

She saw her mouse moving on the screen, him taking over. But he glanced up at her, winked. “Until - next time.”

“In your dreams.”

“Most assuredly. Fuck. The things I’ve seen. I took a screenshot of your cunt.”

“You fucking bastard.”

A waggle of his eyebrows and then he pulled her fucking panties out from the sleeping bag, dangled them. “They still smell like you. Hope it lasts, but you might need to overnight me a package-”

“Fuck off.”

“Suppose that’s a ‘good night’ in and of itself,” he grinned. But it dropped, and he sighed. “Time to go. None of that no you hang up first shit, Beckett. I’ll see you-” He paused, swallowed. “I don’t - really know.” His brow creased. “I can’t-”

“I don’t need promises,” she muttered. “I don’t need you calling me and keeping me up all night either. You do your job and you let me do mine.”

“Did I say I’ve made you my job? I’m getting pretty damn good at it too. Made you come five times.”

“Six.”

“Shit. Again, I missed it.”

“And that’s how we end this. Good bye, Richard.” She violently shook the mouse but it wouldn’t move for her.

And then the whole screen went black, and she let out a little cry, surprised it was over just that fast.

It was over.

\-----


End file.
